Attempts have been made to create simulated neural circuits that include properties of biological neural circuits.
Biological neural circuits are made up of an incredibly dense meshwork of numerous, complex, tree-like units called “neurons.” Each neuron can make thousands of connections with other neurons. It is at these connections or “synapses” that information is transferred between the neurons.
A biological neural circuit may be exposed to sensory events. For example, an olfactory neural circuit may be exposed to an odorant, or a visual neural circuit may be exposed to an object. Exposure to a sensory event may result in activation of certain branches of the neurons within a certain period of time, and activation of one or more branches of a particular neuron within a certain period of time may result in activation of the particular neuron.